With my distaste for choreography applied to social dance it surprised me when I began to consider competing at Bambloozled. I had a few goals and ideas. It seemed like the best forum for them, so I began to start my work. I wanted to make something that was awesome, but entirely leadable. I wanted to have a dance that switched lead and follow roles. I wanted to stretch myself and try out something new. The first big task was to propose the idea to the person I wanted to perform with me. When I thought of doing this she was the first person I thought of. She’s fun to dance with and we already dance pretty well together. She’s a performer, so stronger than me in this area. She also likes to switch dance roles. She accepted the idea fairly soon after I proposed it.

I had already found a song that I loved. My weird hobby is finding legally free music. She and I threw ideas at each other and got to where we had a full song of dancing pulled together. Some of the best parts came together the weekend after we started talking about it. We were at a park in New Haven blaring our song and just freely associating ideas. We then practiced anywhere we could find some space. We started off practicing on her roof. It’s not an ideal place to work on dancing, since it is a very grippy surface and somewhat uneven. We moved into her tiny living room once the weather turned. A few times we used a hallway at my university.

After our second performance someone came up to us and asked where we got the routine. It was a weird moment where my dance partner and I looked at each other . Umm, we sort of just tried things out?